Innovator and Early Adopter

I am often a disruptive early adopter. Some have said I have a talent for making practical and usually successful choices based experience and an in-depth and hands-on understanding of new technologies and their benefits.

Here are a few examples of new approaches I have championed over the years, and then demonstrated, often in the face of strong legacy opposition at the time:

1979: Early adopter of “connectionless” TCP/IP networks because I found my efforts building end-to-end reliable networks using connection oriented protocols (X.25) were unworkable.

1980: As a participant in IEEE 802, I proselytized for the adoption of Ethernet CSMA/CD by local computer companies like Network Systems and CDC by pushing the DIX Blue Book to several engineering V.P.s I knew.

1984: Successfully pioneered the use of TCP/IP on supercomputers by refusing to succumb to heavy commercial pressure for legacy RJE methods.

1990: Blocked the use of legacy DEC and IBM proprietary terminal oriented systems for UofMN campus information system, and promoted the use of lightweight transaction oriented TCP/IP protocols, which became an important enabler for the creation of the first Internet browser, Gopher.

1997: Promoted the use of DVB saturated transponder operation over SCPC multi-carrier back-off for international Internet satellite services.

2005: Pushed for NAL (a.k.a. fragmented MP4) based video transmission methods and abandonment of MPEG-2 TS based architectures years in advance of DASH.

2009: Argued that video was becoming an extension of the web (a.k.a. HTML-5 video extensions), against strong opposition from legacy architectures based on MPEG-TS such as Microsoft’s Mediaroom with its closed proprietary app ecosystem.

Not to mention many other “skunk works” efforts where I felt it was folly to wait even though there was significant opposition:

1977: Adopted the Unix operating system over vendor software for Lunar Sample Analysis laboratory instrument control at UofMN.